We live in an age of inclusion and integration that generates global imperatives to work together socially and artistically -- above and beyond any boundaries and limitations of style, genre, category or culture.
Pianist, arranger and composer Richard Sussman has been passionately exploring the inner and outer frontiers of contemporary musical expression for the past five decades. I first met Richard when he brought his
adventuresome and hard-swinging hard bop Quintet into my San Francisco jazz club Keystone Korner in the late 1970s.
Since that unsung era of exciting modern jazz exploration and development in the 1970s and early 1980s, Sussman has continued to be an active and integral member of a whole generation of musical innovators -- almost all of whom are quite amazingly still working very productively on the cutting edge of contemporary jazz music -- along with Jerry Bergonzi, John Abercrombie, Richie Beirach, Michael Fomanek, Jeff Williams, Dave Liebman, John Scofield, Randy Brecker, Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, Gene Perla, Larry Schneider, and so many others.
